There are secrets in this world you really don't want to uncover. But then, why take our word for it when you could find out for yourself?
DR-style RP || Chapter 6
11/20 remaining
Their eyes are too bright, their teeth are too sharp, their denim jackets and onyx sunglasses mere figments of glamour. They lurk in forests and alleyways, in the wild crowds of concerts and the dark corners of nightclubs, selling the drugs that let you see the future and that you’ll never shake your addiction to until you die. The faerie live among us, and they grow restless. They need entertainment, and mortals are just so much fun. It’s dangerous, of course it’s dangerous, don’t be stupid, it’s deadly — but just think of the prizes!
A long-lost love? They can reunite you! Fame and fortune, oh, the fair folk can give you that in spades! The network has put up a mystery prize of anything in the whole world, and the driven and desperate souls of the earth have come calling for their chance to compete. The neon lights are blinding, the music is deafening, and the rules of the game are simple:
1. NO NAMES.
2. PAY THE PRICE OF ENTRY.
3. KILL OR BE KILLED.
『SHUT UP AND DANCE.』is a discord-based DR OC roleplay group with apps opening Friday the 4th of May!
Etienne’s eyes gently flutter open, laying across what seems to be tiles of marble. He raises his head, looking around in an empty-headed daze. Cradled in his arms is the stub of what seems to be an ornate torch. Pressing his palms to the floor, the boy shakily stands up. Despite all this, there is no palpable fear in his eyes, not even when he looks around at the stage of his own demise. Behind him, the great plains and rolling hills of places he once lived at have been burnt to an ashen black. Spindly burnt twigs that use to be trees jut up from the ground, and every river visible has long since dried up and cracked. The sun glares bright red. In front of him, a grand, spiraling tower that reaches towards the sky stands in decrepitude, and at the top... the light of a lighthouse. Then, as if from some ethereal plane, a ghastly voice begins to narrate, as though the following events were but some child’s storybook.
‘On top of the tower is the flame that keeps the world alive. When the flame dies, the world shall perish as well- this is the road to redemption for the one who thought he could replace God.
Only the Messiah may take the mantle, and relight the dying hope of this world. Take the blessings at the top, and with your friends, pave the way to better future. We beg of you.’
The mastermind looks down to the torch handle gripped gently in his fingers. He’s entirely alone in this near-apotheosis of a world. He grins sorrowfully at the message. If this is the mockery he shall receive for his deeds, then he will not object to it. The blonde pushes open the doors and steps in without a second thought.
Staring him right in the face is perhaps the grandest stairway he’s ever beared witness to. It spirals out of sight towards the heavens in the blink of an eye. Etienne, with a soft exhale, begins to trek upwards. These, he knows, as the very same steps he walked countless times before: when maintaining the drive, when reconstructing these islands, when throwing Penelope off the top, and then, when walking up to once again commit murder with his own two hands. Now, he treks it one final time towards his death.
After what seems like an eternity of facing the same stairs over and over again, as if he’s stuck in some sort of loop, the stairs end to face a normal looking door. He recognizes it instantly- it’s the door to the third floor of the lighthouse. There’s no time to cry about that, though. He’s here to die, after all. The boy pushes it open after a moment’s hesitation.
Inside is a grand hall, comparable to a ballroom or atrium. There are grooves in the floor, thin, but vast. They spread in ornate patterns along the glistening marble. A few of each converge at several sealed doors along the sides of the circular room. They’re impossible to open, that much is easy to tell from their looks. The sommelier nervously steps to the center of the room when the narrator chimes in once more.
‘For his punishment, the Messiah was expected to bear the pain of the twelve layers of Hell he had created. Only after he had atoned with his own blood would the torch be lit.
Scared to sacrifice himself, the Messiah fell to the wayside. Disguising the hells as blessings, he tempted the friends who had joined him at the start of his journey. One by one, he pushed his friends gently through the doors and sealed them in. With their blood, he paved his way to the heavens unscathed.’
The floor underneath him rumbles with some fearsome tremor - Etienne stumbles to stay on his feet as each individual tile of the tower trembles. Joining in with the roars of the building in some taunting chorus are screams - screams of the departed - in order. Andivus begins, and Augustus ends. Soon enough, the noise consumes the blonde, and he’s fallen to his knees, begging for it all to stop while covering his ears. In the center of the circle, a statue arises from the nether, a familiar woman you once saw flung herself off the top of this very lighthouse.
The screams fade into the silence of death, and Etienne is left hugging the torch in the wake of the statue’s grace. There’s a sickly pouring noise as the mastermind looks frightfully around. With his face turning pale, he watches in silent horror as the grooves in the ground fill with ichor- the blood of the departed. He covers his mouth in disgust, looking away and staring back at the statue. The blood flows through the grooves, blooming in patterns around the room until it pours into the center- the statue. In the dish within the stone Ashraqat’s hands, the boy can soon see his reflection. It fills with the blood of the departed. And then, the blonde is left with his torch. With no other alternative in sight, closing his eyes, he dips the torch into the dish. The torch thrums to life, igniting in some arcane purple fire in front of his eyes.
The lights keeping everything visible in the tower die down. Etienne can only see right in front of him thanks to the torch, but his grimace at what took to fuel it makes it evident he may not complete his journey. The purple light illuminates a continuation to the stairway. He shakes his head, walking towards it with a pained expression. It’s long and winding, just like the last one. But what differs, after a bit of climbing, is the end. The door is replaced with a ladder and floor panel, with light gleaming through the edges. He takes a deep breath to steel himself, careful not to catch the rope ladder with the torch as he pushes the door above him open.
Daylight breaks through- he’s reached the top, with the decaying world sprawled around him. Where the light of the lighthouse would stand is instead an altar on the open roof. The altar is of another woman. This one, ironically, of his own blood, the same blood that avoided the flame for a moment. Her hands cup a small, pitiful flame, waning with every second. This is Morgana, eyes blindfolded like Lady Justice’s. This is the fire that keeps the world alive, then? Etienne is here to complete his duty.
‘Go on. Relight the flame. Save this world and claim your place as its God.’
Its God. He’s never wanted that. He never wanted to be that. All he wanted to do was make people happy- but he must go with this execution. That’s the last reparation he can offer to them all. Taking a knee, Etienne holds the flame to Morgana’s hand, carrying the torch that she passed to him.
He stops moving. Someone grabs his hand.
And his head.
And his neck.
Seemingly from the abyss, an array of hands cling to him with a vengeance. Ghastly and immaterial, they hold with a vice like grip, keeping his hand just inches from relighting the flame. The voices that screamed but a moment ago, he knows, are the very same forces holding him back. They’ve all come, all the lives he’s destroyed, have come back to end it once and for all. Though his face is shocked for a moment, he closes his eyes, resigning himself to smiling at that thought. Teaming up against the villain after all this time? There’s a sense of. . . pride in his chest, like watching a child take their independence.
Soon enough, the grasp doesn’t just keep him in place. It pulls, and they pull, and they drag him backwards with such a force that the skin of his arms and legs are abraded as they bring him down to the bricks of the lighthouse. That’s not the end, however. With his hand barely clutching the lit torch, the dead initiates bring him ever closer and closer to the edge. Etienne can’t even bring himself to muster any sort of resilience. This is the fate they’ve given him, and he’ll take all the retaliation in stride. He’s brought to the edge of the lighthouse- and together, murderers and victims, friends and foes, wrenched him from the skies and brought him down to earth.
Those wings of his costume do nothing to help; even if he tried to move them, the hands tear apart the feathers and frames. The scratch and gnash at his skin, tearing open cuts and blooming bruises as they wrestle to bring him ever closer to the ground. He submits himself to splattering against the ground, but when he opens his eyes and actually looks towards the destination, it’s not what he expected. It’s a hollow, empty, cold abyss staring straight back at him. The fallen initiates drag him ever towards it, and he closes his eyes tight, readying himself for what’s to come. He and the ground meet. The hands recede into the void, pulling him down in with it, burying his head, his body- consuming him almost in his entirety. It’s dark. He can’t breathe.
The torch in his hand crashes to the ground - purple flames begin to consume the earth, the lighthouse - everything. The fire consumes all in sight, and Etienne fades away.
Then, suddenly, the weight on his body lightens. And lightens. The fingers cutting into his flesh let go, or simply slide off in a limp wristed fashion. The constriction on his chest lifts, and so does he. Etienne’s face is brought out of the inky abyss, and his executioners momentarily release him. He finds himself embraced by a different set of arms. Gently raising his arm to hold on to his protector’s shoulders, the blonde finds himself tearing up, and letting out a weak laugh. Charon is preoccupied, slashing away at the determined hands until they recede back into the darkness. They grow and chase, and soon, the golem is forced to flee, cutting down those that come too close for comfort.
“You always were obstinate about your duties,” the mastermind shakingly adds in. “Goodbye is supposed to mean goodbye.”
The makeshift reaper is silent in his focus; running, slashing, and shielding the blonde from both assailants and flames is taxing work. It seems as though they’re fleeing for forever. Etienne remembers this feeling of being on the run vividly. At least, this time, he isn’t alone. His eyes close, and he leaves himself to whatever fate Charon chooses for them. The flames roar behind them, scarily close. It’s not a concern for the man made of stone, but he’s consigned himself to being the mastermind’s guardian. Just in sight, seemingly materializing out of nowhere, a building rises from the decrepit earth. By the look of it, it’s some sort of a church, decorated in full white. There’s no other solace in sight. The duo burst through the doors, closing promptly behind them. The flames are left in abeyance for a moment. Etienne and Charon have but a moment’s rest.
The golem looks at the boy in his arms, beaten down and bleeding from countless scratches. One of his legs is broken, identifiable by the unnatural angle it’s bent at. His hand covers a gash by his ribs- the golem is momentarily surprised by the damage the fallen were capable of doing. Down the aisle and between the sets of pews stands one single altar bed. Where there ought to be a coffin on that edifice, there is nothing. Charon takes the opportunity to lay the mastermind down. It’s silent, save for the lapping crackles of the torch’s flame. Etienne opens his eyes, tilting his head towards Charon.
“So... you have gone and disobeyed me, haven’t you?”
Charon’s face is stern. “Please, reconsider-”
Etienne cuts him off, tutting in disapproval.
“On topic, now.” His shallow breaths and faint rise and fall of his chest shows just how close to the edge of life and death the blonde teeters. And with that sacred breath, he chooses to innocently laugh. “Ah, but I must admit... I enjoy watching that righteous spunk of yours. Like a true knight, eh? Hollow no more.”
Charon doesn’t seem to be able to find the words for a response. He stares down at the myriad of injuries across the boy’s body- even if he were to find a way out, how would Etienne survive at this rate? It’s too late. He’s already failed to protect him. Even so, the golem looks down to the blonde. It’s confounding, really. Charon knows the reason Etienne’s smiling, and yet, simultaneously, can’t quite figure out why he’d be happy in this situation.
“I really wish you hadn’t caused such an abrupt halt-... Ah, but I did promise y-you I would allow you to be by my side when this happened, hm? Can’t do that if I’m off to the nether with the dead! Hmmph. Then I have to commend you for your devotion to your orders yet again.”
Charon waits a bit, until he’s sure Etienne is done talking.
“... You aren’t alone, at least.”
Etienne’s stilted breath leaves his lips as a content sigh. He’d shrug, if he had the energy to do it.
“You ought to leave soon. It would be a shame for you to burn up in here, no?”
Charon shakes his head. “You said I could be here until your last breath.” It’s followed by a set of tears dripping from Etienne’s eyes, slowly sliding across his face.
“Damn me and my big mouth.” He looks up towards the golem, and then, at the scythe looming behind him. “It must be tiring, hearing me say this over and over. I have one final order for you, Charon. Do be a dear and listen, would you?”
The golem’s expression contorts to one of perplexed concern, but as always, he would accept any task Etienne asked of him. “Of course.”
“I know this will be difficult for you, but! I believe in your ability to carry it out to full effect.” His own eyes meet Charon’s yet again. “Please. Kill me, won’t you?”
Charon, for once, is visibly caught off guard by such a statement. Despite his garb, it’s always been Etienne’s role to be the executioner. Blood has touched his scythe, but never has he taken a soul. The blonde looks up expectantly, still grinning.
“Oh- you’re not waiting for the part where I shoot up, all fine and dandy, and call this all a joke, no? Because that would simply break my heart. Ah, who am I to fool, the thought of leaving you as you are has already crumbled my poor self to dust...” He bites his lip, ability to keep up such a cheery face fading. “I am well aware how daunting that is to ask of you. But... well, some force or another has to send me to my grave. I’d rather it be the one person who still considers me their friend. One last goodbye, no?”
There’s no tears on Charon’s face. He can’t cry, after all - but his visage is pulled into one of pain. How strange, to learn all the different ways one can still hurt, even without the ability to be injured. There’s no way out, no way to refuse.
“If it’ll end your suffering quicker... then I must.”
The moment following is perhaps the quietest moment Etienne’s ever met face with in his life. Some air of peace washes over him, keeping his eyes just open enough to watch Charon hoist up the scythe in his hands. It’s a slow movement. The golem hesitates at the top of the swing, staring down at the boy he was once responsible, and still is responsible, for protecting. The mastermind wishes he could look away, but instead resigns himself to speaking one last time.
“Goodbye, Charon.”
There’s the sound of wrended flesh, of skin, muscle, and bone being torn apart with ease. A stilted gasp of pain, but no scream. Green eyes wander to the gash across his chest, straight through his heart. That face full of pain, shock, and regret fades into a content smile. His eyes close for the last time as the golem looms over his victim, blood dripping from the blade of the scythe. He gently lays a stone hand on the forehead on the hand of the corpse.
“Goodbye, Etienne.”
The stone man slowly exits the church, a trail of blood behind him. The building crackles into flames, slowly consuming everything inside. Even the cadaver is reduced to nothing more than a stain on the ground, making you question whether there really was anyone there at all.
A lone, burnt out torch falls into the trial room. It’s yours, now.
The Bay Was White With Silent Light [Chapter 6 Pt. 2 Start!]
[♫♫♫]
You breathe in and smell the sea.
The smell of the sea is a curious one, because it is the same all over the world, whether you are getting on a ship and tearfully waving goodbye to your family on the last occasion you see them, or whether you are stepping off that same boat onto the shores of a strange land full of strange people where you plan on doing all sorts of strange things, or whether you are being summoned by a tall and silent boatman in order to meet with someone who has been keeping you captive on an island chain for months.
There are no mysteries at Cipher Cove — they have been eroded away like the soft and porous chalky rocks of a cliffside are eroded by the steady and unstoppable juggernaut of the tide. Much like the sea, the truth can be peaceful or terrible, shallow or deep enough to lose oneself in a thousand times over, a violent destroyer of worlds or a serene and peaceful landscape. Like a looter breaking into an ancient tomb and using a crowbar to remove the gold and jewels from a sarcophagus, every scrap of mystery has been removed from your circumstances, leaving nothing but the simple fact that one day you will die and there will be no pomp or ceremony to it, not really.
When every question, every doubt, every unknown has been stripped to the bone like carrion in the desert, all that remains is action. You have been invited to meet your captor — you are even being offered a free ferry ride, free of charge, from your most gracious of hosts. Owls and ravens fly overhead, a conspiracy and a parliament linked hand in hand by the airships that loom on the horizon, hanging in the sky like a heart that’s stopped seconds before a dizzying fall.
The problem with questions, generally speaking, is that to ask a question is to posit that your problems will be resolved once you learn the answer, and this is of course not the case: an answer may be unsatisfactory, it may be the very opposite of what you want to hear, it may be something so outside your sphere of comprehension that you never expected you might hear it at all. The terrible truth behind the mysteries of Cipher Cove is that answers are not always better than questions.
Charon’s ferry awaits, chained to the dock as it was on the first day you arrived. This will be the last day any of you spend in Cipher Cove.
The Lonely Lighthouse stands tall and solitary on the beach, a witness to so much evil that it’s been long since horrified into silence. Places are like people; they often find themselves with everything that’s happened to them etched into their bones, cross-stitched into the fiber of their being, daubed in smeared red hues on their insides. Cipher Cove is more than a series of desolate, barren islands — it is a place that has taken far too many secrets unto itself and collapsed under their weight, like a waterlogged dam finally giving way.
There’s something different about the cave, this time, that high-ceiling chamber that overlooks the sea. The light that filters through casts strange shadows on the walls, distorting each of the initiates into cartoonish exaggerations of themselves, ciphers that are impossible to understand, deceptions upon deceptions until the original thing to be concealed has been obfuscated out of existence entirely.
The plinths of Augustus and Fayez bear the former’s shattered glasses and an unfinished sock, knitting needles crossed over it. A bloodied book rests where Henry Wingfield once stood. There is a shadow looming over the room, not just the shadows cast by the light of the sea but the sort of shadow that causes eclipses — the shadow of something impossible huge and fearsome that blots out all light and casts the world into confusion and chaos.
A cipher is a simple code, a mechanism by which one character is substituted for another. Perhaps, the world is only one big cipher wheel, and the slightest turn of it can suddenly make everything you thought you understood look like something else entirely, an alien combination of glyphs and sigils, replacing the known and familiar with the strange and alarming.
The initiates stand in a circle as the trial begins. The cipher wheel of the world is turning. The only question left to be answered is where it will stop.
“Two this time, is it,” Charon says idly. “Your time isn’t going to be extended despite this. Three hours. Now, go.”
He seems to hurry out of the hotel very quickly. Two case files have been pinned in the relevant places, as usual. How could this happen, when Henry had insisted on him and Nemesis being the last?
“Waiting for the other shoe to drop” is a turn of phrase which describes the sickly anxious feeling one gets in the pit of one’s stomach when one knows something terrible is approaching, but not when. It is the feeling of being in freefall, and knowing that the ground is rushing up to initiate a meeting you very much want to avoid, like a distant aunt at a party that you’ve long forgotten the name of and will spend the rest of any conversation with awkwardly trying to circumnavigate that fact. It is the lurch that one feels when one misplaces one’s footing, in the futile moments of windmilling one’s arms before gravity gets sick and tired of one’s antics and drags one to the ground. And ever since the execution of Henry Wingfield, you have all been waiting for the other shoe to drop. There are no more islands to explore in the waters of Cipher Cove — the initiates have plundered this place of its mysteries like British explorers stealing another culture’s priceless cultural artefacts. They have found the answers they were seeking and realized that sometimes finding an answer, like being given a box of rabid wolverines, creates exponentially more problems than it solves.
Any period of peace in the Cove has inevitably been interrupted by something: a storm of lightning, flashes of green and purple and blue that split the sky and open up the bowels of the Earth to spill out all the secrets locked within, like a bomb breaking open a vault full of rare treasures, or a game, games that everybody who played is now acutely aware were nothing more than charades, play-acting, to the real work of Levoile’s secret societies as children playing house is to drawn-out and bitter divorce proceedings in which two people who once loved each fight tooth and nail to destroy one another. Unfortunately, the tension that has been building over the last week isn’t going to be interrupted by either of those things — the other shoe is being pulled back, ready to deliver a steel-capped kick to the ribs.
Cecilija, Teddy, and Therese arrive on the mainland aboard the ferry just before seven in the evening. They are in limbo, in motion, a car full of undone seatbelts about to be politely but firmly introduced to a brick wall by a universe with a sense of humour and a penchant for punishing hubris. There is no sense of security in Cipher Cove — the ancient war machines and hibernating monsters make a mockery of the very idea, and the sight that awaits Cecilija’s eyes only a few minutes after the boat alights on the shore, one which she wastes no time in alerting the other two to, is to a sense of security like a match to a gasoline-soaked rag. Sometimes the impact of something terrible is all the worse for the shock of it, sometimes all the worse for the anticipation, but very often the two mingle into a combination that, like a cocktail made up of different kinds of spirits, is far more like a kick to the head than its individual parts.
There is no advantage to the knowledge that something terrible is going to happen if the terrible thing is going to happen anyway.
Augustus Wolfgang is dead. But the tense feeling still hangs in the air, thick and choking like the smoglike air of a newly industrialised metropolis. A trail of blood leads into the Lonely Lighthouse, smudged and wet like the ink on a letter that drove its recipient to tears. There are some things that even knowing they are going to happen will not prepare you for.
There is nothing to be gained by knowing that the other shoe has yet to drop.
The Jaws that Bite / The Claws that Catch [Chapter 6 Start!]
[♫♫♫]
The purpose of a lighthouse is to shine a light into darkness. To act as a beacon that leads ships to safety, like a friend taking your hand to guide you through a strange place. But as the ferry sails a direct course towards the lonely lighthouse on the mainland, it seems that this lighthouse would only take someone’s hand in order to play the cruel trick where one pretends to offer a hand up to someone who has fallen down only to let them hit the ground for a second time, this one likely to sting doubly so for the betrayal.
The last few days, of course, have brought nothing but betrayal — or perhaps that’s not true. After all, the initiates have more answers than they did before the mysteries of the Bellicose Bayou were answered, and the questions they do have are of an entirely more practical bent. There is a certain degree of sophistication that ‘why’ and ‘how’ questions have that ‘what’ ‘who’ and ‘where’ questions lack — a savoir faire, perhaps, in knowing that after one has answered the basics of questions such as “what was that noise I just heard,” “where did it come from,” and “who is the armed man I just saw entering my house through the back door,” one is able to build up an internal model of one’s situation upon which more complex questions can be built, such as “how quietly can I climb out of my bedroom window” and “why has someone been sent to my house on a Tuesday night to kill me.”
Now that the initiates are able to ask themselves: “why has the rogue agent of Vivere Disce brought us here and forced us to do this?” and “how can we escape?” and “why are all the chairs in this city so goddamn uncomfortable, seriously, what’s up with that”, perhaps the embers of hope in their heart can be fanned back up into flames. The feeling of anxiety that lingers in their hearts like an unwanted and self-invited houseguest teeters on the brink of exhilaration, a dark determination that stands on the edge of a precipice and resists the urge to jump only to pull out a pair of skis and grin like a maniac. As the ferry alights among others of its ilk, the lighthouse shines its beacon far out to sea.
The question to ask is, when they find the answers they seek, will the initiates sink or swim? Oh! Oh, my dearest apologies, I didn’t mean to stir up bad memories. I keep doing this. Give me a moment to collect myself Let’s start again; the question to ask is… no, wait, that one wouldn’t be any good either. Alright. Let’s just consign this paragraph, and between you and me we’ll pretend it never happened, okay? This is the last chapter, and my last chance to not dig myself any deeper.
And now I’m anxious. Count down with me, okay? Three, two, one…
Will the answers be a restorative draught or a deadly poison?
When Henry reaches the bottom of the rabbit hole, the crash through the ceiling knocks the wind out of him. He wheezes and rises to his feet, dusting the debris off his clothes with irritation. There’s nothing but darkness all around him -- that is, before a sole spotlight shines onto an end table several feet away. There a present awaits him, and the sight of it causes him to scoff in disbelief.
Sitting neatly on the rosewood table is a corkscrew and a bottle, labeled with a single tag. He looks down at it, eyes widening at the message written in ornate cursive.
{Drink me.}
He shakes the bottle, hearing the liquid slosh within. It’s nearly empty. Enough for one final drink before his demise? … As if. With practiced movements he snatches the corkscrew up and twists open the glass bottle, downing the substance that tastes just how he’d remembered it all those months ago. Henry could never mistake it - it’s Nepenthe, the wine he’d grown to enjoy the most. He’d been deprived of it for so long…!
But before he can even think about getting comfortable, sharp thumps resound throughout the room. He almost drops his bottle, barely gripping it by its neck as he turns about, bewildered. Who is he kidding? He can’t just sit here. He stumbles blindly in the dark till his hand brushes over the contour of a light switch and dim lamps illuminate the room. It’s a gothic bedroom pulled straight from the 1800s, complete with ornate curtains over the neatly-made bed. His eyes dart about, taking inventory: wardrobe, table, bookshelf, bed, door-- door!
Henry darts for it, his hand outstretched towards the knob, but another thump - louder this time - startles him till he’s backed right into the opposite wall. The polished wooden door threatens to give way every time whatever that is tries to break through. But there are no other exits, and even the hole in the ceiling he left has repaired in the time he’d looked away from it.
He mutters a curse and looks around for anything else he can use, anything to counter whatever lies in wait for him. The table’s drawers are empty, and there’s nothing in or under the beds. What’m I supposed to fuckin’ do then, he thinks, eat shit and die?
A book on the shelf offers a hint towards salvation: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. And indeed, when he throws open the doors of the armoire, a second smaller door lies behind it… chained shut and locked with its key nowhere in sight.
The thumps only get louder still, the frantic pounding keeping time with the pace of his heart. His first instinct is to reach in and yank at the chains, to force the lock open and crawl through to a better resting place than this. He tugs and tugs with frustrated grunts, but the chains are tough and the lock just won’t budge. He feels his head start to ache, and the world is spinning - god, is the pressure getting to him from just this? He lets his hands drop to his sides and glances toward the bookshelf, stumbling back to it with clumsier movements than before. He’s losing it, he thinks as despair begins to snuff out his motivation. He’s just going to break here, of all places. They’ll all see him so pathetic before his death.
...No- he pulls out the Narnia novel and opens it, expecting a highlighted hint. On the contrary, what he sees is an empty box. The puzzle clears itself up to him then, and he pushes on despite the sudden onset of nausea. Not yet, damn it, not yet.
Henry opens another fake, closes it, and throws it onto the bed. The thumps continue, and he swears he can hear the barest hint of voices on the other side. His hands fumble with every fake he can spot, rinsing and repeating, desperately seeking that key that will fit the lock and let him escape before the hopelessness of it all crushes him. But no key comes. He tosses the final book on the bed and reaches out only to find thin air and a barren shelf.
It was a red herring from the start - there was never anything for him in there.
The suffocating feeling all at once brings him down to his knees, and then he’s doubling over, eyes widening as he gasps for air he suddenly can’t seem to find. From his spot on the ground, he catches a whiff of the empty bottle he’d clutched the whole time. It’s still open, though drained of the liquid within. A sudden realization makes his blood run cold - did Nepenthe always smell so much like sweet almonds?
In that moment the wooden door bursts open, and the pain is so unbearable he can’t even look that way. Soon enough, he can’t even look any way anymore. The wine bottle rolls away from his hand as conscious thought leaves him; he sinks completely to the floor and soon begins to convulse. Cloaked, faceless figures clutching pitchforks and axes stare down at him from the entrance, no doubt the source of all the clamoring from before.
“There’s the villain!” yells one, pointing at the writhing bookseller.
“Thought he could get away, did he?!”
“To hell with that! Get him!”
His feeble death throes are buried beneath the roars of the mob as they swarm him at last.
Since the day of the storm, the Monumental Mechanism has lain silent and still -- but is it dead, or is it perhaps just biding its time? Like a bear in hibernation, it seems best not to irritate it, although someone seems to have been doing their damned best to achieve just that. There’s a certain degree of irony involved in investigating the death of a detective, like the arson of a fire department or the betrayal of a friend -- uncovering the truth is made more difficult by the very nature of the truth to be uncovered.
But it seems like none of the truths that hide among the islands of Cipher Cove are pleasant ones. Most useful truths, however, are unpleasant, and much like the captain of a warship being told there’s a breach in the hull, the truth is vital and painful in equal measures. There is no breach in the hull of the S.S. Elijah, however, as Charon sails you once more to a cave, illuminated in eerie colours, the seawater throwing out twisting and coiling shadows onto the edges of the cave.
The shattered compass that lies on Nemesis’ plinth seems like a painfully blunt reminder that you are, in fact, rudderless. Your next steps are obvious, of course, but like someone navigating a treacherous mountain path in the middle of the night, there’s a danger at every point that the obvious next step may also be your last.
“Don’t worry about the body. You have three hours.
...Hmph. If you really can’t be bothered to look around in the water, then call me over.”
The waters that surround you all have finally claimed someone, and grief abounds. Even so, for the poor victim’s sake, you must press on and solve the mystery that lies below.
Case Victim: Luke Cavendish (Nemesis Jones)
Location of Body: Darkling Delta (C.C.C.S. Hubris)
The sunken warships at the mouth of the Darkling Delta sit low in the water, their presence menacing in an entirely different way to the menace that would be posed by war machines in gleaming condition: it is a menace that tells you that one day, you too might be ancient and rusting, useless, discarded, and slowly wasting away somewhere far away from anybody who cares about you. It is a menace that tells you that one day every dream will die, every dearly cultivated ambition will turn on you as a sour, venomous little thing. The menace of those still and silent war machines is the menace of the world moving around you while all the running you can do only serves to keep you in the same place.
The Monumental Mechanism, since the storm, has gone back to its previous silent state, lying dormant like a boa constrictor slowly digesting a meal -- which is why the flash of light and the explosion of light and colour that erupts from one of the gears in the early afternoon comes as a shock to the small party that happens to be investigating the sleeping behemoth at the time. After a few seconds of rapidly reorienting themselves, they realize that the arc of crackling light didn’t originate from the mechanism, but from the Darkling Delta. Etienne, Mitzi, and Eliana hurry to see what’s happening.
The arc of energy that spiraled haphazardly through the air like an aircraft being shot down originated from one of the warships that slowly decays in the Delta’s ship graveyard, that’s for sure, but which one? That’s the question which is out of the curious investigators’ minds just as quickly as it enters them, as they spot something just underneath the water by a breach in the hull of the C.C.C.S. Hubris. It’s difficult to make out until Etienne floats them over, and the grisly clarity of confronting something up close reminds them of the lesson that the ship graveyard has to teach:
Therese and Chiyoko have emerged from the storm at last, and as it abides, you can’t help but recall the expression ‘the eye of the storm’. A moment of peace before the chaos resumes -- but you’ve yet to be offered any moment of peace, temporary or otherwise, and you can’t quite decide whether the worst is behind you or yet to come. When they arrive at the hotel, Chiyoko is carrying a record, old and battered, which she slots into the record-player.
The voice that you hear as the recording begins is certainly the voice of Ashraqat Hazred. But there’s something missing from it. It’s difficult to say what -- some spark, the filament of a light bulb, a pilot light. She sounds distant, faraway to the point of being nearly completely absent. And yet, it’s her voice.
“She’s dead,” is what she says, before the sound cuts off. A few seconds of silence go by, and just when your first instinct might be that there’s no more to hear on this record, she continues, her voice now audibly shaky. “Morgana. She’s dead. The Cipher Cove Conspiracy, it’s over. I… fuck. It’s all over. Or. It isn’t, really. Because it wasn’t… it wasn’t her, that’s not… it’s not just what she was like, it was that stupid fucking piece of shit glori-fuckin-fied rock, she wasn’t… I didn’t even mean to, I was just tryin’ to get it out of her fuckin’ hands and we were strugglin’ for it and…”
There’s another brief period of silence as the recording is paused. The tail end of a sob is barely audible once it’s turned back on. “So now I’m recordin’ this because… because, fuck, if it happens again, if someone gets their hands on it again, someone’s gotta to know what happened, right? Maybe they can… do somethin’ about it. Fuck. ‘Cause I’m not… I’m not stickin’ around here much longer, not without her, not after…”
Silence. “So anyway. Here’s what I’m doin’. I’m hidin’ the Heart, that glorified fuckin’ piece of candy, and I’m hidin’ Levoile. Nobody’s gonna get in or outta here -- she called it… the dis-lo-cation drive, I think -- and I’m destroyin’ her notes, burning it all, so nobody can figure out how to use the fuckin’ thing even if they do get their hands on it. And I’ve left behind a little shard of it, not enough to do much, just enough that… if someone gets their hand on the full thing, someone in my family will know, and hopefully they’ll be able to get there in time and stop anythin’ happenin’. That’s goin’ to the Pierce cousins.”
“And I’m lockin’ off the Cove, and I’ve got enough of the fuckin’... conspiracy on my side, that the rest of Morgan’s plans ain’t gonna go ahead, ‘cause they’re all too busy fighting each other now to do anythin’ like that. And… fuck, I had to do it, right? I had to stop her, because if I waited she’d just get stronger, she’d have more superweapons and double agents and… I wanted to trust her so fuckin’ bad, right?” This time, she doesn’t turn off the recording device, and sobs openly. “But you can’t trust anyone when they’ve got that power. It makes you too dangerous, and… fuck, I had to stop it, do you understand that? I had to.”
She sighs. “So. Levoile’s locked off from the world. Morgan’s notes are destroyed, and the Heart is hidden, and… I don’t understand it enough to destroy it, or the weapons, or anything, I couldn’t even read her fuckin’ notes ‘cause I’ve always been the fuckin’ stupid one, ain’t I. And if you’re hearin’ this then… then I guess whoever ended up with my piece of the Heart didn’t succeed in stopping whatever’s happenin’, and you’re at Cipher Cove, and someone’s got control of the Heart, so listen to me when I tell you: you’ve got to stop them. Whatever it takes. You got to.”
There’s a long silence. “...There’s not even anything left of her. Just a… a fuckin’ scorch mark, where she was standing.” A pause. “I’m sorry, Morgan. I’m sorry, Cy… fuck, man, I killed a man, years ago, and all this time later I still never bothered to learn his fuckin’ name. Sorry. I… I fucked up. I fucked up really badly. Hopefully this fixes it. Hopefully there’s somethin’ good for me after all this. Not sure if I deserve it, but…” and the winds start to howl in the background of the recording, as if the device has been moved to the edge of a great, great precipice. “At least I tried, right? They can put that on the fuckin’ gravestone, heh. Here lies Ashraqat Hazred. ‘Least she tried.” She whispers something, barely audible, but it’s easy to tell what it is - it’s a prayer. Then the wind screams, and then, very quietly, there is a crash.
The first thing you think as the gale-force winds nearly throw you off your feet and the multicoloured lightning arcs towards the ground as if the sky is reaching out for a long-lost lover is something is different, this time. The storm is no longer akin to the furious roar and bloodthirsty ravages of a wounded animal, but instead strikes with the surgically precise movements of an apex predator. A pillar of glass rises up, ten stories high, and is summarily disintegrated by a stream of green energy, reshaped and then shattered countless times until the shards of glass seem to dance through the air in hypnotic and fractal patterns, never staying the same for more than a moment.
The Fictitious Forest lights up, the circuit-like patterns on the trees glowing violet and electric blue, veins of turquoise and vivid orange spreading out across the ground, providing light in the darkness as thick black clouds block out the sun. The Monumental Mechanism purrs like a satisfied cat who has just done something he knows he shouldn't have and is now smugly waiting for you to notice, the ground starting to vibrate just a little as the lightning converges, pouring into the gears of the mechanism where the energy seems to pool, converging much like condensation. Grooves and notches in the machinery wide enough across to be rivers pulse with the otherworldly energy.
You feel as if you are on the verge of something great and terrible, as if you’re just beginning to feel the ground tilt beneath your feet before it falls over and the island and the world itself slides into some yawning abyss. The raindrops send the smallest jolt of energy across your skin whenever they touch, invigorating and painful all at the same time. The wind shows no sign of stopping. You’d better look for shelter…
The Analogy of the Sun [Blackout 4 Results + ...?]
In Plato’s allegory of the cave, the human perception of the world is represented by a tribe of people, living in a dark cave, only able to see the shadows projected onto the cave’s walls and not the things and events that cause them. In the darkness, you feel even more impaired than those cave-dwellers, unable to see even a shadow of an answer to the mysteries that swirl like a storm around the island. But there are some secrets that can be uncovered, and no matter how much darkness there is, even the smallest light can always provide some degree of illumination.
The practiced motions of a blind struggle in the darkness are absent, this time. Instead, initiates of secret societies stand resolutely in the darkness, unmasked and unafraid. After a few seconds, the lights turn on. A stand has been taken -- a stand against secrecy, a stand against the charade they have been forced into, a stand that shines a bright, fearless light both into the metaphorical crevices of Plato’s cave and into the corners of the hotel. Etienne, Fayez, and Matsukaze of the East Quarter Vinery, Henry, Chiyoko, and Nemesis of the Fencing Society. Therese, Teddy, and Cecilija of the Magician’s Circle, and Rhea, Eliana, Augustus, and Mitzi of the Municipal Mint all look at each other when the lights come on.
There is something about sharing a secret which brings you closer to someone, no matter how you may feel about them otherwise. A group that shares a secret is bound together, for better or for worse. An unmarked duffel bag full of cash, a terrible crime, a grand conspiracy. These are the things that tie people together, more than common goals or even friendship can. And it is this that keeps the initiates standing as Charon approaches.
"The game is finished. Not that most of you were intent on participating this time, anyway.” His sharp gaze fixes on Teddy, who still clutches fake blueberries in her hand. “Most being the keyword.”
He continues to speak after that, surprisingly (or perhaps unsurprisingly) unaffected by their collective mutiny. “I’ll admit it. It was impressive, your solidarity. You all could join together in the way the four societies could not. But none of them will be obtaining details on your performance anytime soon. They haven’t even any idea how to help you yet. You see, the blackouts are like everything else the societies do. Without the cover of secrecy, those four factions are just ridiculous children that don’t have a clue what they’re doing.”
“But the time for that convoluted garbage is ending. The rogue agent has taken control of this test; you are all on the eve of a new world order. You all know exactly what the Heart of Levoile can do by now; you’ve seen so many glimpses of its power. And in order to be a part of it all... you’ll have to take another’s life.”
Unfortunately for the hostages, the facade dropping doesn’t seem to mean the end of the murder phase. “The rogue lies among you even now, wielding the power that keeps you all trapped here. So consider the offer they’re extending to you wisely. There’s a great deal on the line, this time.”
His spiel complete, the ferryman exits the hotel, fading into the foggy night. Perhaps, sometimes, masks are worn not for the benefit of the wearer but for the benefit of the beholder.
The sun gives way to utter darkness... within and without. It’s been a while since the last competition, and the tension that has already come with the zeppelin explosion is bound to build up further until it, too, bursts. There is no time for you all to relax tonight, as the phone’s incessant ringing slices through your sleep schedule and announces the cryptic characters you may as well have memorized.
The message from the bottle rings through your mind. This test had been hijacked, it had said. So... what was this?
